My Research Statement
I defended my doctoral dissertation in March 2023 and graduated with my PhD in May 2023.
The Algerian War (1954-1962), as officially acknowledged by the French state since 1999, was one of the longest and most brutal decolonization wars of the twentieth century. It pitted the French army against the Algerian nationalist movement (FLN) and ended with Algeria winning its independence after 132 years of colonialization. France has long nourished ambivalent views about its colonial past, oscillating between defending its legacy as a ‘civilizing power’ and considering its colonial past, especially when it comes to Algeria, as a taboo because of its association with terrorism, massacres, and torture. My dissertation entitled “The Different Legacies of the Algerian War in French Transgenerational (Auto)Biographical Graphic Narratives” examines (auto)biographical graphic narratives published between 2011 and 2017 to unpack how the Algerian War is at the heart of the social fracture in contemporary France today, a fracture stemming from questions of national identity, national belonging, and national memory.
The Algerian War has many different legacies attached to it in contemporary France, especially depending on who is telling the story. In my corpus, I examine three of these legacies—French soldiers, pieds noirs and North African (im)migrants—analyzing life writing that tackles intergenerational tensions that stem from what comics scholar Hillary Chute describes as ‘the intersection of collective histories and life stories,’ especially when the French official memory favored forgetting for so long. By sharing the personal experiences of their elders, each author supports a more pluralistic French society, challenges existing definitions of “Frenchness,” and advocates for more transparency in France regarding the events and the aftermath of the Algerian War by breaking the silences encouraged by the French government. By questioning the relationships between past and present, the authors replace an official and monolithic History with the image of a plural and polyphonic past, challenging dominant ideologies in France that influence how people of North African descent are perceived by French people. Thus, the authors open the door to a new creative expression of History.
In this dissertation, I demonstrate how my corpus use a popular medium to engage readers on a personal level in a way that a book, a testimony, or a documentary do not, through the act of closure and the interactive process of working through multimodal personal narratives. All of the authors analyzed in this dissertation mobilize comics’ formal conventions to transmit their protagonists’ traumatic memories, encouraging others to do the same but also using the specific genre of life-writing in comics to reflect upon the complex nature of self-identity. They tell a different story of the Algerian War than the one told by the state. By using the medium of comics, they have probably reached a broader audience than if they had chosen a more conventional medium. Lastly, the authors demonstrate the many different ways in which autobiographical writing can encourage the cognitive and emotional engagement of readers through the use of multimodal metaphors and humor, for example, or by drawing characters in close-ups with clearly discernable expressions. My corpus, alongside public intellectuals, and other forms of art, have had an impact on social consciousness in France, contributing to the growing awareness and acceptance of a multifaceted France.